


sorrow's beginning is love

by Saraste



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Also I've not seen the movie so don't at me, Angst, Battle of Five Armies, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29981967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Tauriel cradles Kíli in her arms and the world turns grey.
Relationships: Kíli (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	sorrow's beginning is love

**Author's Note:**

> I have not seen the last movie in the Hobbit-trilogy and probably never will. This just wanted out. Originally written August 2020, edited and posted 2021.  
> Don't like, don't read.

There is a trail of blood at the corner of his mouth, open in shock, soundless in death. She notes this with an almost detached air, every word and wail stopped by her struck-speechless mouth that has last cries out his name but can now utter neither name or cry of sorrow. Her body knows, bringing her down beside him, on her knees on the blood-spattered snow where he lies so still and broken. Her fingers still move to press and keep life in where it’s already too late, has been since she first saw.

Her eyes are fixed on those lips, which should be curving into a cheeky smile, but are… they are… Her breath is coming in ragged bursts like she’s run the whole day and night through Mirkwood, not just the length of a battle-field. Her eyes cannot stopper her tears even when her mouth is still trembling, keeping in her anguish even when there is no reason.

Her mouth aches to plead for him to open his eyes, to speak, to tease, to _live_ , even when she knows.

She knows it from the way his eyes, his laughing and merry eyes which always looked at her like she was the most important thing in the whole of Arda, now stare up into the grey sky above sightless and still and empty, a sky where no sun can surely ever rise to brighten the day ever again, not with him gone.

She knows it from the stillness she knows is under the armour covering his chest, her trembling hand laid uselessly over where no heart beats, as if she could force his life back into him, to fills lungs, to make his heart beat again, make blood flow, spark where no flame of life resides.

Stare as she might, clinging to futile hope in the face of mortality, of cruel, needless death betraying her worse than she could have ever thought it could, there comes no animation to those bloodied lips, no secret smile for her, no teasing, no jest in that voice that she will never hear again. No words of adoring love, which had come to him so easily, easier than her own, will ever pass those lips.

_Kíli is dead._

She wishes, here, at the end of everything, as she faces the rest of her days without him, that she had told him she loved him more often, that the words had come easier, even if she is sure that she had shown it in other ways, and that he had known.

But here she is, failed, cradling the broken body of her beloved, whose death makes the world less bright and cheerful, dulled by his too soon parting, the colours of the world bleeding to grey in a way she has not thought possible.

She has nothing but a choking wordless wail for him, and a choking grief, a pressure around her chest that makes her feel like she will never be able to breathe freely.

His death is an open wound that will fester and end her if she’ll let it. As she sits there on the cold ground with his blood soaking her leathers she knows, with sudden piercing clarity, that she will fade, _is_ already fading. And she welcomes it.

Giving into her grief, she cradles him and curses her slow feet, her lacking aim, her king and his orders, her prince, the wretched servants of evil, all of which have taken him from her, her from him, the life from his body… But worst of all, she curses him, _her Kíli_ , who had revealed how much loving him would hurt and cost all too soon, how grief is the cost of love, always.

The world hasn’t always been fair on her, on him, but this, this is simply cruel.

She weeps, her cheek against the cold of his bloodless cheek, wishing she had said _I love you_ just one more time more to ears that would hear, and kissed lips that kissed back, and touched and learned and been with him.

But the world is grey and he is no more and there is naught but sorrow.


End file.
